Bitcoin Back to $6,700; US Government to Fight it With Ripple?

After plunging to $6,300 on Thursday last week, Bitcoin stayed near the same levels for the entire weekend thanks to low buying interest. But come Monday, the cryptocurrency made a sharp jump upwards which added over $500 to its value in a matter of only a couple of hours. With such a behavior, it will be tough to predict where the price will go next.

In other interesting news, Puget Sound, a private art college from Tahoma Washington, recently made headlines as the school that leads the way in Bitcoin donations. As Bloomberg reports, the school broke new ground by receiving multiple BTC donations so far, aided by its list of alumni from the tech industry. One of the alumni was Nicolas Cary, co-founder of Blockchain – a popular platform for Bitcoin wallets – who managed to convince the college to start accepting Bitcoin donations.

For its first transfer, Cary helped Puget Sound connect with Bitpay to set up a wallet that could be used for donations. Following a donation from Cary himself to the tune of $10,000, the college successfully received several more BTC donations during recent years. And according to Bloomberg, other colleges are now following Puget Sound’s example, including top-ranking universities like Berkeley.

Bullish Pressure Not as Strong

Bitcoin’s price behaved somewhat suspicious last week as indicated by the sharp upticks on the weekly price charts. After hitting a low of $6,236.67 on early Friday morning, the price didn’t go through any big changes until Monday morning, when it jumped from $6,310.61 to a weekly high of $6,948.50 within less than two hours.

This major swing was assisted by a surge in 24-hour trading volume, which at one point even hit $7.2 billion. For comparison, the volume is now near the same level from last week, which is around $4 billion. As for the market cap, it’s currently at $114 billion.

Our technical analysis shows that the market is still bullish but also leaning towards a neutral point. Out of 12 oscillators, 3 are pro-buy on the short-term charts and 6 remain neutral. Sending pro-buy signals are also 7 out of 12 moving averages, with the SMA 100 staying over the SMA 200, showing there’s less resistance to the upside. However, the volatility shown on the daily and 5-hour charts seems to be working in favor of the bearish sentiment on long term, which could lead the price back to $6,300 again. With the swings we’ve seen this week, keep a close watch for a trend reversal over the next days.

White House Mulls Over XRP Adoption?

Another big news update from the crypto sector this week was the reveal of plans by the US government to battle China’s dominance over Bitcoin with the Ripple cryptocurrency. Indeed, the White House is allegedly worried about China’s 70% control over the Bitcoin network and is looking into XRP adoption to counteract the country’s cryptocurrency strength, Forbes magazine reports.

The main strategist of Ripple, Cory Johnson, reportedly revealed in an interview that Ripple representatives have already had talks with White House on the matter. In his own words, the meetings were met with “open-mindedness” and the administration came truly prepared, exceeding Johnson’s initial expectations of their interest in the cryptocurrency.

If such a plan is realized, Ripple’s market price could significantly rise following an official adoption. However, as critics of the cryptocurrency have pointed out many times before, 60% of all XRP coins are already controlled by Ripple Labs, so even this cryptocurrency won’t be free from the control of one major entity.